Teens arrested in bomb hoax at Tierrasanta school

Two teenage boys are spending Tuesday night at Juvenile Hall after they attached a suspicious device to a fence at a middle school, which caused buildings to be evacuated, street closures and a significant response by emergency personnel, officials said.

A 12-inch-long cylindrical device with wires was found about 4 p.m. attached to the fence at Farb Middle School on La Cuenta Drive in the Tierrasanta neighborhood, said Maurice Luque, spokesman with the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. A robot was used to X-ray the device, Luque said. That prompted emergency personnel to proceed cautiously and to initially put the school on lockdown and later evacuate it, along with the the nearby Murphy Canyon Recreation Center on Orleck Street, Luque said. Streets in the immediate area were also closed to traffic, Luque said.

Two 15-year-old Junipero Serra High School students were filmed by surveillance cameras placing the object on the fence, the spokesman said. San Diego police located the boys, who said they found the object — used to extinguish fires at kitchens of commercial restaurants — discarded in a nearby canyon and thought it would be funny to place it on the fence, Luque said.

“It looked like it could be an explosive device of some type. It didn’t look safe being there,” Luque said. “When this device is not in a normal location, it looks like it could be something that could cause some harm.”

The teenagers were arrested on suspicion of possessing a hoax device, the spokesman said. They may also have to reimburse the cost of about 40 emergency personnel from San Diego city and school police, San Diego fire, the county environmental health agency and an EMS ambulance that spent more than four hours at the incident, Luque said.